Mrs. Potterson swooned to hear such coarse language, whilst her daughter tittered behind her hand.
From just above Antonia’s head came a voice from out a window. It belonged to the lady of the house herself. She held Mr. Toddles in her arms. “Bless my life, Antonia! What are you doing here? You should be sitting in your upper rooms. There is to be flood, or have you not heard?”
“Upper rooms? Cornelia, dear, this area isn’t safe at all. All of these buildings are going to be washed away!”
“Washed away? But Georgianna said that we should all be fine.”
“And just how would Georgianna know such at thing?”
The eminently sagacious Georgianna Milvey’s head now popped up next to her friend Mrs. Gargery for the purpose of making her own case. “Because, Antonia, I remember that when the Thames flooded back when we were girls, these streets became like canals, but all were safe and dry who could climb above their soggy ground floors.”
“Yes, we all remember that flood, Georgianna. But this one is different. Quite different and really quite deadly. Come with us now. Quickly.”
“On the contrary. I intend to stay precisely where I am,” replied Georgianna Milvey through pursed, determined lips. “I have done with your ordering me about as if you are the fount of knowledge spraying all of us with your wet plashes of wisdom. It is infuriating on ordinary days, but on extraordinary days when we are already to be put in the way of significant inconvenience it is beyond maddening.”
Antonia was set to respond, but her friend Malvina Potterson preempted her. “Hear me, Georgianna. I hardly ever listen to Antonia because she is generally obnoxious and imperious and I can’t abide her.”
“I hope to God there is a contrasting predicate to your sentence,” muttered Antonia.
“But she is telling the truth. The Outlanders are going to destroy a dam upriver and flood the valley in a terribly large way, and you and Mrs. Gargery are not at all safe where you are. Come with us to the All Souls Church. We’re going up into the campanile.”
“What do you think, Sarah?” asked Mrs. Gargery of her maidservant. “Should we heed them?”
“I believe that we should, mistress. If only for Mr. Toddles’ sake.”
“There is a good girl. Thinking of Mr. Toddles’ welfare. You are a priceless treasure. Georgianna: we must go. You will come with us.”
Georgianna Milvey shook her head.
“But girl, you simply cannot sit here and be washed away. I’ll not allow it.”
“I have a point to prove, Cornelia. Antonia Bocker isn’t always right. This time I will prove her wrong. I will sit here and watch the canal waters rise and then recede, just as they did when I was a girl.”
“And you’ll do that whilst drinking yourself into a comatose state!” shouted Antonia in a pitched and angry voice. “I am with Mrs. Gargery: I too will not allow it. Georgianna Milvey, you are everything that I oppose, but it is not my wish that you should die. Now get your besotted body down here this instant or we will drag you by force and you will be blue and black with bruises as a consequence.”
Betty Potterson had taken a great interest in Miss Bocker’s brash handling of the recalcitrant Miss Milvey. If only she could find courage herself to speak to her mother in that way when the two found themselves in opposition over some such matter, the most recent being Mrs. Potterson’s continual playing upon her harmonica glasses long into the night. Betty smiled to herself. For she remembered what she had done before joining her mother and the others upon the Potterson lawn not twenty minutes before: she had taken a heavy hearth shovel to every one of those noisy goblets, and squealed with glee as they sang themselves into a thousand little pieces.
In the end, Georgianna Milvey was effectively vanquished, though her displeasure was somewhat mitigated by Mrs. Gargery’s offer of her very best bottle of brandy, which the inebriated woman accepted with a liplicking tongue and nestled in the crook of her arm as if it were some live thing to be cuddled.
With grateful thanks to Mr. Graham for his updated map of the southern region of the valley, the dynamite crew found its way quickly to the foot of Belgrave Dam. As Joper and Stryver discussed betwixt themselves the best places within the earthen structure to emplant the charges and thereby restore to the Thames its historical outlet, Ephraim and Mel Scadger and several deputy sheriffs under the command of Tipstaff Magwitch created a half-circle round them, reconnoitering the surrounding trees and brush for any sign of the Project men, whose job it was to prevent escape from the valley. Had these men also been ordered to prevent a dam from being dynamited? Perhaps not. Because for at least the first few minutes of occupation, the area remained quiet, and there were no signs of a threatening Outlander presence.
Joper and Stryver worked briskly and assiduously to plant eight separate sticks of dynamite into the northern side of the dam, all of which had been carefully transported from an underground storage pit near the entrance to the coal mine. One by one the blasting caps were attached and carefully crimped into place. One by one the cylinders went into cavities trowelled into the dam wall. Those cylinders installed highest in the dam were given the longest fuses to allow time for the igniter to light them in succession as he descended the dam, and finally time enough to quit the area altogether before the dynamite began to do its business.
Several additional minutes passed and there continued to be no sign of the Project men. Magwitch consulted his pocket watch and released an impatient sigh. Things were still moving along too slowly for his comfort. He whispered to one of his deputies, a young man named Elwes: “We’ll take the Blackheath bridle road back to Milltown. The ground is higher there in case we get caught in the flood.” Again, he pulled out his watch — a nervous habit. As he was clasping it shut for the seventh or eighth time, he felt a stabbing pain in his hand, accompanied by a loud crack. A bullet had pierced the lower half of his palm, shattering his watch along with most of his carpal bones.
Magwitch dove for the ground as his deputies scattered and dropt to their stomachs. Melchisedech Scadger pivoted and fired his pistol into a thick stand of trees, fired in the direction from which the bullet had come. In turning his body, he gave a shooter from the opposite blind the chance to put a bullet directly into his shoulder. The powerful projectile ripped through flesh and bone and knocked him backward into the grass.
More shots rang out. It was difficult to tell how many men comprised the ambuscade. Shots were pinging off the earthen dam now, as Joper slid down the side to remove himself from the hail of bullets.
Stryver did not. The blasting caps had now been attached, the fuses fixed. There was nothing left to do now but to light them — all eight of them.
Faulty aim from the Tiadaghton shooters.
Strong returning fire from his own men.
And luck.
Matthew Stryver counted on each of these three things to help him finish the job that he had been sent to do, even if there be insufficient time to remove himself wholly from the critical area of detonation. In that brief moment, one important fact had become clear to the father of Tattycoram: that he would be sacrificing his own life in the cause of saving Dingley Dell.
One. The first fuse hissed and sputtered as all around Stryver pebbles ricocheted right and left, little puffs of dust rising up where a bullet meant for the obstinate collier missed its mark. On the ground below, the deputies and their tipstaff fired from their improvised entrenchments in the stony field, shielding themselves as best as they could behind small piles of rocky detritus that had tumbled down from the dam over the years. They exchanged fire with the Project men from within gutters and hollows in the broken, uneven earth, giving shot-for-shot, though the more sophisticated Project guns dominated the exchange. Twenty seconds into the firefight, Magwitch’s own pistol found purchase; there came an anguished cry from behind a large tree and then an Outland agent revealed himself by falling stricken to the ground. Was it a lucky hit or were Magwitch and his men quickly learning how to use the Beyonders’ weapon with success? The tipstaff thought the latter. Proudly so.